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Show Opinions Vary on Success Of Mexican Labor Plans West, Southwest Farmers Reported Objecting Object-ing to Minimum Wage Clause; Many Prefer Familiar 'Padrone' System. I By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. r. - -si their money in planting the long-staple long-staple cotton the government wants. Neither Senator Downey's office nor Senator McFarland's had any comments on the padrone system. Then I talked with a department of agriculture official. He was of the opinion that the contracts had worked out fairly well, and he pointed point-ed out that there was an "ideological" "ide-ological" as well as a practical objection ob-jection on the part of the farmers to the contract the objection to establishing es-tablishing a minimum wage for farm labor. Here are three quite different viewpoints. view-points. They represent a tiny fraction frac-tion of the tangle which Washington has to untangle, has to reconcile. If Washington is a madhouse, who made it mad? MacArthur Lauded For Leadership When the chapter of war history dealing with the Battle of New Guinea is written, it will be one of the most important in the whole book. That is what military men here tell me. WNU Service, 1343 H Street, N-W, i Washington, D. C. i What has happened to the scheme for bringing Mexican labor into the United States to help fill the gap left by the drain which industry and the draft have made on the farm? In trying to get an answer to that question I turned up some rather interesting data which I wish to submit sub-mit as an answer to that slur on our fair city that you hear frequently these days: "Washington is a mad house." It may at least explain what ! makes the wild cat wijd. j I first went to an official in one of the war agencies with my query about Mexican labor. He is a very energetic, sincere worker, an anti-New anti-New Dealer, who is here trying to do his share to win the war. I am not permitted to use his name. He said: "Somebody in our government with a lot of high ideals went to the Mexican government and made an agreement to send Mexican laborers to the United States. They arranged to have a contract which would deal with each laborer as a free agent and put in all sorts of condition which the farmer who had to hire him had to agree to, including housing, hous-ing, transportation, and a minimum per diem rate. "But instead of sending over experienced ex-perienced farm laborers the Mexican government gathered together a lot of ne'er-do-wells and hoboes. It didn't work. In fact, the farmers got less help than usual. The trouble was that before the social-conscious officials took a hand the American farmers had been making contracts with padrones (bosses) who got the money and the workers, established the working conditions and paid the workers as they saw fit. They brought in trained workers and they made them work. But the starry-eyed starry-eyed members of the Mexican and American governments wouldn't hear of making use of the padrone system." That sounded very bad to me, so I called up the offices of Senator Downey of California and Senator McFarland of Arizona, who are members of a special committee holding hearings in California and New Mexico on this question of imported im-ported farm labor. Success Reported Senator Downey was still in California Cali-fornia but his office was enthusiastic. I was told about how successful the use of this imported Mexican labor had been under the government's plan, in the beet industry, how it worked in the great guayle rubber fields of which 500,000 acres have been planted as part of our homegrown home-grown rubber program. How the senator was arranging with the state department for the admission of more foreign labor. Then I talked with Senator McFarland. Mc-Farland. He said he would go along with Senator Downey in some of the things but not all. He said the farmers' complaint in Arizona was that they got neither the quantity nor the quality of workers they wanted. want-ed. Cotton and dairy workers are their chief needs. He said that Some pf the farmers wouldn't sign a contract con-tract which the American government govern-ment required. All protested against it. The objection was to the clause which established a minimum daily wage. The farmers said that the wprker came put to the field in the morning, picked until he wanted to quit and then weighed in. But in order to be sure he had worked his minimum hours it was necessary to have a timekeeper and a bookkeeper book-keeper to check on his time and the whole process was too expensive. Long-Staple Cotton He said, on the whole, that the Arizona farmer didn't get as many workers as needed and didn't get as good ones as he had expected. On the department of agriculture's program for the next year there is a quota of 160,000 acres of long-staple long-staple cotton. One hundred thousand acres are allotted to Arizona. Normally, Nor-mally, we import most of our long-staple long-staple cotton frcm abroad. Senator McFarland said that unless some solution of the farm labor problem was reached, unless the present contract was modified and the Arizona farmers were assured more and better hands at a lower cost, they wouldn't be able to invest They began telling me that bit by bit just before the second front in Africa opened. Then the African .story wiped everything else off the first pages. Recently they have been talking about New Guinea again. They keep saying to me a little reproachfully, re-proachfully, "the American people don't realize what MacArthur has achieved down in that jungle country." coun-try." These aren't the "MacArthur men" there are such in the army, a little group of hero worshipers who perhaps worship a bit more fervently than logically. But the men who have watched the New Guinea campaign cam-paign from Moresby straight up over the Owen Stanley range and down the other side and up to the eastern coast of the island tell me that Mac-Arthur Mac-Arthur and the leaders he has about him have done a great and a significant sig-nificant job. It is great because he has accomplished accom-plished what It was freely predicted the Japs could not do (and didn't). It is significant because it has proved that Australians and Americans, given giv-en the training, can beat the Jap at his own game. They can (and have) beaten him with less training, without with-out the fatalistic quality of the Jap, whose religion is to die rather than surrender even when dying isn't a military necessity. There are two reasons, which military mili-tary men put forward why the battle of New Guinea has not been painted in its true colors represented in its true importance. One is the fact that MacArthur leans backward in his communiques. Another is a peculiar copy-desk prejudice ol American newspapers, which causes them to play down reports from the distance and play up the reports from the war department in Washington. Wash-ington. There are two reasons why Mac-Arthur's Mac-Arthur's reports are given out from his headquarters in Australia instead of by the war department in Washington. Wash-ington. One is that the Australians (and perhaps MacArthur) want it that way, and another is because American newspapers, who pay a lot of money to keep correspondents in that area, don't like to have their men scooped by Washington. Why He Is Winning ( MacArthur may have another reason rea-son for not ballyhooing his achievements. achieve-ments. He was beaten in Bataan. He may feel that until he has a complete victory to his credit, he doesn't want to sing too loudly. But MacArthur has won so far in New Guinea because the men under his command were able to do what they never had a chance to do on Bataan because of lack of numbers, supplies and food. On New Guinea they were able to do better than the Japs could, the very things which the Japs could do best. And they did it in the kind of jungle country in which that "best" was even better. They were able to adapt themselves to the environment environ-ment which required a kind of fighting fight-ing and a kind of endurance for which the Japanese had spent years in preparing. The kind of fighting that resulted in the fall of Singapore and the kind which the conventional British soldiers even the Far Eastern East-ern experts said was impossible. B R I E F S by Baufchage "An Idle Ship Is a Crime Against the Public Interests."- so reads a sign over the door cf John H. Lof- land, Co-ordinator of Ship Repair and Conversion. . Officers of ships sailing the inland waters of the United States are licensed li-censed to sail their ships on a river where no ships sail the Red River of the North. ... Inflated life belts which are standard stand-ard equipment on many United Nations Na-tions ships are inflated with carbon dioxide gas the same gas which carbonates beverages and charges water and is known in its solid form as "dry ice." "If we want to keep toe kind of a world we are fighting to win, we will have to accept the duty of maintaining main-taining at all times an adequate Merchant Marine and a healthy shipbuilding industry." Admiral Vickery. The ships being built in American shipyards today have more speed, greater fuel economy than toe ships built in toe First World war. The speed increase means that three of these will "outrun" four old ones. The Red Cross has designated the week of January 18-24 as the Second Red Cross Benefit week of the Bowler's Bowl-er's Victory Legion. From a Commentator's Mail: I have been listening at your radio talk and come to the conclusion that all talk on radio should be censored. cen-sored. You are speaking in a way that is against the government. District of Columbia. You must be acquainted with the fact that many educated Negroes in toe larger towns already vote, and that the extension of suffrage keeps pace with the growing education of the colored people. Louisiana. |